husband's
shoulder, cried: "Oh, how beautiful! I did not know that there were so
many ships!"

An hour later they departed in order to breakfast with the old couple,
who had been informed several days before of their intended arrival.
Both Duroy and his wife were charmed with the beauties of the landscape
presented to their view, and the cabman halted in order to allow them
to get a better idea of the panorama before them. As he whipped up his
horse, Duroy saw an old couple not a hundred meters off, approaching,
and he leaped from the carriage crying: "Here they are, I know them."

The man was short, corpulent, florid, and vigorous, notwithstanding his
age; the woman was tall, thin, and melancholy, with stooping
shoulders--a woman who had worked from childhood, who had never laughed
nor jested.

Madeleine, too, alighted and watched the couple advance, with a
contraction of her heart she had not anticipated. They did not
recognize their son in that fine gentleman, and they would never have
taken that handsome lady for their daughter-in-law. They walked along,
passed the child they were expecting, without glancing at the "city
folks."

Georges cried with a laugh: "Good day, Father Duroy."

Both the old man and his wife were struck dumb with astonishment; the
latter recovered her self-possession first and asked: "Is it you, son?"

The young man replied: "Yes, it is I, Mother Duroy," and approaching
her, he kissed her upon both cheeks and said: "This is my wife."

The two rustics stared at Madeleine as if she were a curiosity, with
anxious fear, combined with a sort of satisfied approbation on the part
of the father and of jealous enmity on that of the mother.

M. Duroy, senior, who was naturally jocose, made so bold as to ask with
a twinkle in his eye: "May I kiss you too?" His son uttered an
exclamation and Madeleine offered her cheek to the old peasant; who
afterward wiped his lips with the back of his hand. The old woman, in
her turn, kissed her daughter-in-law with hostile reserve. Her ideal
was a stout, rosy, country lass, as red as an apple and as round.

The carriage preceded them with the luggage. The old man took his son's
arm and asked him: "How are you getting on?"

"Very well."

"That is right. Tell me, has your wife any means?"

Georges replied: "Forty thousand francs."

His father whistled softly and muttered: "Whew!" Then he added: "She is
a handsome woman." He admired his son's wife, and in